Cheryl Roberts, Chemeketa Community College president, talks about the school's response to a rash of recent threats during a public safety forum on Tuesday, March 6, 2012. (Photo: TIMOTHY J. GONZALEZ | Statesman Journal)

Outgoing Chemeketa Community College President Cheryl Roberts is honored by area luminaries at Willamette Valley Vineyards. Here she laughs with Dick Withnell. (Photo: Thomas Patterson / Statesman Journal)

Outgoing Chemeketa Community College President Cheryl Roberts hugs Terri Jacobson after Jacobson gave her a book of photographs of Roberts' dog in different locations on the campus. (Photo: Thomas Patterson / Statesman Journal)

Outgoing Chemeketa Community College President Cheryl Roberts is honored by area luminaries at Willamette Valley Vineyards. Here Roberts blushes next to Miller Adams as her friend Dick Withnell speaks about her. (Photo: Thomas Patterson / Statesman Journal)

Ward Paldanius (right), former athletic director at Chemeketa Community College, stands while be applauded by President Cheryl Roberts (left) and Rick Adelman, head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, after the school dedicated it's basketball in his honor on Saturday Dec. 8, 2012. Adelman was hired by Paldanius as the head coach of the Chemeketa men's basketball team in the 1970s. (Photo: TIMOTHY J. GONZALEZ / Statesman Journal)

Chemeketa Community College President Cheryl Roberts recited the words of a French novelist from memory, a small zen garden sitting to her left atop a table.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes," Marcel Proust once said.

It's an inspirational quote that the French-born college president has applied at Chemeketa, a job she began in 2007 and will depart from this month.

During her presidency, the college launched a scholarship program that offers free tuition for high-achieving high school graduates, persuaded voters to approve a $92 million bond measure, brought the Boys & Girls Club to campus and partnered with law enforcement to create a treatment program that helps former prison inmates successfully transition back into the community.

She oversees more than 2,300 employees and a college campus filled with about 38,800 full-time and part-time students. From 2008 to 2013, the number of degrees and certificates the college has awarded steadily increased from 1,301 to 1,880.

"That's what education does," said Roberts, who begins her day with meditation. "It gives you fresh eyes about yourself, about the world, about possibilities."

With weeks left before she becomes the new Shoreline Community College president, located north of Seattle, a bare nail hangs on a wall in her neatly organized office — a remnant of where Roberts used to tack up her to-do list. Student art, black-and-white photos from France, a calendar with a smiling golden retriever, books and even a Vitaminwater bottle emblazoned with "leadership" are all in their proper places.

Roberts, who studied phenomenological psychology, is hyper aware of how people experience themselves in space, time and places. "You have to feel col-leg-iate," she said.

On her bookshelf sit a welding hat, a hard hat and a cowboy hat. The job of a college president, after all, requires wearing more than one hat.

The community leader

The cowboy hat was a gift from Dick Withnell, a business and civic leader who successfully led the 2008 campaign to pass a $92 million construction bond for Chemeketa.

"Cheryl and I were locked at the hip for that period of time," Withnell said.

From fundraising and speaking at community events, they had to convince enough voters to approve the bond during the May 2008 election after a similar bond measure failed in 2006. It required a double-majority, which meant at least 50 percent of registered voters within the four-county school district had to vote in that election.

Money from the bond went toward upgrading existing facilities and creating new buildings. That included a health sciences center, an industrial technology building and a classroom building at the Salem campus, an emergency services training building in Brooks, and a classroom building in McMinnville.

Withnell gave Roberts the cowboy hat as a reminder of something she's not. The cowboy hat represents a big-talking rancher who owns a ranch but has no cattle — a person who talks the talk but never walks the walk.

"There's phony leadership," Withnell said about the pretentious rancher. "They don't want to get on the ground with the rest of us and they become the rancher that talks about the big ranch that he has but he doesn't own any cattle."

That's the opposite of Roberts' leadership style. She has a genuine interest in helping Chemeketa's students, he said.

"This is a defining moment for this Valley," Roberts said from an election-watch party at DaVinci's restaurant in downtown Salem in May 2008. "It's going to give us the kind of platform, the kind of infrastructure, that will allow us to really meet the 21st-century work-force needs and truly continue to transform lives."

A new applied technology classroom building in Salem is scheduled to open in 2015.

It's the last building financed by the 2008 bond and a grand opening Roberts hopes to return to Salem for next year.

The professor

Teaching a class every fall is one way Roberts keeps in touch with students on campus.

If she had her way, students and staff would wear their name tags and greet one another by name all the time like they do at freshmen orientation.

"You can get lost in the metropolis of Chemeketa and Salem," she said.

The class Roberts teaches is called First-Year Experience, created in 2008 to help new students learn the critical thinking skills to adjust to college life. Most students, she said, try to "super size" their high school experience, which doesn't work in college.

Makiah Merritt, who is graduating from Chemeketa this week, sits with Roberts on a council that helps promote student diversity.

"She loves to get to know the students," Merritt said. "She just walks up to random students and says, 'Hey, how you're doing? Where are you coming from?' "

Merritt first met Roberts when she randomly introduced herself to him during freshman orientation. As a college president, he said, she's skilled at communicating what's on her mind during meetings while summarizing what other people are feeling at the same time.

Other student-oriented initiatives launched during Roberts' presidency include the Chemeketa Scholars program, which offers graduating high school students with a grade-point-average of at least 3.5 the chance to receive a full-tuition scholarship for two years, and the Verizon Connect Center Boys & Girls Club on campus.

"It's not about me," Roberts said. "It's about this grand idea of making something wonderful that's so fundamental to democracy, which is an educated citizenry, that I want to be a part of."

Passing the baton

For seven years, Roberts and her husband attorney, Miller Adams, have split their lives between West Salem and Seattle.

That has meant countless morning and late night drives back and forth, including some as early as 4 a.m.

Shoreline Community College is located about 10 miles away from the couple's house in Washington.

"It has been a privilege to be the president of Chemeketa," Roberts said. "The unwavering confidence and support of this community has kept me engaged for seven years, and I will cherish every memory."

After her 91-year-old mom passed away in November, Roberts said she realized how important family is to her.

Her mom, Ann, was a librarian. Her dad, LeRoy, was a decorated Tuskegee Airman in World War II and one of the first African-American fighter pilots. Roberts along with her family moved to Tacoma, Wash., from the segregated South in the 1960s, so she has longtime family ties in the state.

Born in 1957, Roberts is now 57 years old.

"It's my golden year in life," she said with a smile. "A lot of good things are happening."

With her furniture sold and her house up for sale, Roberts has already passed along most presidential duties to Julie Huckestein, who will lead the college temporarily as officials search for a new president.

Still, there's some unfinished business Roberts is trying to wrap up before leaving her office for good. She has been working on the college's investigation of Patrick Lanning — the Yamhill Valley campus president and chief academic officer of instruction and student services — who has been on leave since Feb. 10. A college employee accused Lanning of sexual misconduct while at an education conference in Portland.

"There's a lot of variables. A lot of things to consider and a lot of events that went on in the case. We have to be fair to everyone involved," said Roberts, who couldn't say if the investigation will be completed before she leaves on June 30.

Meanwhile, Huckestein said that the college's accreditation process, state-level higher education initiatives, college enrollment and the presidential search are some of the college's priorities moving forward.

"We've gone through a difficult time in the last few months, but I really think that this college is more than me," Huckestein said. "It's about the whole college, and it's going to take all of us to build."

As Roberts walks out of her office, she's greeted by photographer Terri Jacobson, who has a black gift bag in her hands. Roberts eagerly pulls out a farewell gift that will remind her of Chemeketa — a book with photos of Roberts' dog, a rescue golden retriever named Logan.

Roberts is touched by the memento and looks like tears are about to fall from her eyes.

"That's my boy," Roberts said as she flips through the book, looking at Logan posing throughout Chemeketa's campus.

A public reception in honor of Cheryl Roberts, whose last day is June 30, is scheduled for 7 p.m. June 25 at Chemeketa's B2 Student Center. Chemeketa's Board of Education, meeting from 5 to 7 p.m. in Building 2, Room 170, also is expected to approve a new contract for Interim President Julie Huckestein before the reception.